


To A Child

by HiddenTohru



Category: Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: M/M, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-09-07
Updated: 2010-09-07
Packaged: 2017-10-11 14:21:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,531
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/113329
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HiddenTohru/pseuds/HiddenTohru
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Adell muses over her unborn child's future, and her dreams for same. Unfortunately, things don't always turn out as we would wish.</p>
            </blockquote>





	To A Child

**Author's Note:**

> As a feminist, I'm always interested in the untold stories of women in fantasy settings. We don't know very much about Zevran's mother, and as far as I saw her name isn't mentioned anywhere either, so this was my attempt to create a bit more of a character there. Even if this is only fiction, in this fictional setting she was still a real woman with dreams and feelings, and I wanted to explore her circumstances, and how they affected her son. Also references my City Elf playthrough, mild endgame spoilers for that. Title is taken from the song by Laura Nyro.
> 
> Originally written in February 2010.

Adell wrapped her arms around her swollen torso and shivered as she looked out over the bleak expanse of the sea. The child kicked a few times, and she began humming as she rubbed her belly, to calm him. He was so active, and she felt so weary already, she could not imagine what raising him would be like. She had decided he would be male, although she had no reason to know this, but it felt right. She did not know who the father was, and she grimaced to think of what her life had become, forgetting about the humming as she remembered how she had come here.

Once a mighty Dalish hunter, in the blossom of her youth and power, she had come across an Antivan woodcutter in the woods one day. An elf, like she, but from the city. Gods help her, she had fallen in love. He was so different from any of the men she had known, and so strong. She closed her eyes and remembered the way his body would glisten with sweat as he worked, shining in the sunlight until he fairly seemed to glow. She had forsaken her clan and followed him back to his Alienage.

What had started so sweetly became an evil happenstance to her then. She discovered her husband was an inveterate gambler, and often came home drunk and stumbling, with nothing to show for the day's work but an empty bottle of ale and empty pockets. She had started trying to find work, so they would not starve, but her facial tattoos had marked her as other, and no one would hire one of the "wild Dalish". Her pride had broken then, under the weight of her sorrow and pain, and when he had been found dead in a ditch, and the men had come to inform her exactly how much he owed, she had accepted her fate without defiance. It was her punishment for leaving her clan, she decided, and so she had begun working in the whorehouse. She was at least smart enough to demand receipts for her husband's gambling debts, and did as best she could to keep track of how much she had repaid, although they made it difficult for her. She would escape, someday.

It had been three years since she had come to this place. She remembered her dead husband with bitterness now, none of the love or sweetness she had initially felt toward him had survived the brutality of her current life. The whores had rudimentary methods to keep birth from happening, but she had managed to become with child anyway. At first it was worse, waking up and emptying her stomach in the privy, then being expected to go and make nice and lay on her back, but later it had become better. Certain men would pay more for a pregnant women, and they had treated her gently, almost in awe of her, as if making a child was a mystery only women were allowed to know. Once she had reached the third threemonth, the Mistress of the whorehouse had told her it was unsafe for her to work anymore. She had set aside a few earnings in anticipation of this, and she was enjoying the vacation, even as her body became unwieldy and difficult to move. The child was very active, and some days she spent in bed, doing nothing but nibbling a few crackers and breathing, getting up every few minutes to toddle to the chamber pot again.

She picked up the gloves sitting on the small table next to her chair and ran her fingers gently over the embroidery. They had been made by her clan's craftsman, and her mother had embroidered the delicate leaves over them, signaling her connection to the forest. She had pawned most of her Dalish belongings once she had realized how close to starvation she and her husband were, but she had not been able to bear parting with her gloves. They were her last connection to home. She rubbed her belly again, and smiled. Her son might be born in a whorehouse, but he would be free someday. Once she had worked off her debts, and he had grown a little, they would leave Antiva. They would find the Dalish again, and she would be welcomed back. Her son would become a hunter, and provide for her (for even in her daydreams, she knew the Dalish would never let her be what she once was, not after what she had done). And she would grow old with him and his children watching over her, and die knowing that she had redeemed herself for her childish mistakes.

The child began moving again, as if his mother's dreams made him restless, and she resumed her humming as she let her mind daydream about how their life would be.

\---------------------------

"Maker's Breath, push or you and the child will both die!" The midwife shouted at her, but Adell felt as if she was outside her body. She felt it pushing, heard herself scream as the pain ripped through her lower body, but it was a detached feeling. Finally, she heard a cry as the child was lifted up and smacked by the midwife, an old whore who had watched over many girls from the whorehouse give birth to their children.

Adell knew something was wrong. Even detached, she could feel the rushing in her womb, and the midwife quickly handed the baby off to another woman as she tried to stem the tide of blood. Something had broken inside her, and Adell felt bitterness as she realized she would never see her son grow up, would never return to the Dalish and regain those soft memories of her youth.

She reached her hands out. "Give me my son."

The midwife opened her mouth to protest, but then shook her head. The woman was too far gone now, had lost too much blood, and letting her die in peace was the kindest thing to do. She nodded at the attendant to hand the baby over, and the young woman (a newly arrived whore, still with the unshed tears in her eyes over whatever had brought her to this life) hesitated only a moment before placing the baby in his mother's arms.

"Zevran." Adell stroked her child's forehead, ignoring the dull pain emanating from her lower regions as she continued to bleed. "You will be strong. You are a child of the Dalish, even though you will be raised in this stinking city. You will be strong. I... wanted more for you... But... be strong..." Her words failed her as her life began to throb out between breaths, and the midwife quickly took the child before her arms could fail her and cause him to fall.

Adell closed her eyes and gasped as one last torrent of pain descended upon her. Tears welled up under her closed eyelids, and as she breathed her last breath, one of them escaped and rolled down her cheek to stain the pillow below.

\---------------------------

As a child, one of the whores (the very one who had attended his birth, or so she said) had told Zevran of his mother's last words. She had also given him the gloves Adell had hidden in her room, something in her still soft and caring enough to look after this orphaned boy and make sure he got his due.

Growing up, Zevran had used his mother's words as a mantra. _Be strong, be strong._ It had helped him survive the harsh life of an orphaned whorehouse boy, had made him succeed in his Crow training as others fell and were killed, it didn't matter how. He would be strong, succeed where his mother had failed, and live.

After the battle with the Archdemon, Zevran realized the curse that lie in his mother's words. He had watched his lover fall, had seen his body lying on a cold slab of stone as others spoke meaningless words over it, and he had known then what her words truly meant. She had escaped her life as a whore by dying, had been able to succumb to the sweet emptiness of death, and he could never do that. Even as he bled inside, his heart torn asunder by the death of the first person he had allowed himself to truly, deeply love, he knew he had to be strong. And it was bitterness he felt then, bitterness at the mother he had never known as anything but a pair of gloves and a few ill-fated last words, bitterness at the necessity of sacrifices, bitterness at Joran for making himself so lovable, and bitterness most of all for his strength. Even as he used that same strength to claw his way up the ranks of the Crows, becoming their Master, he cursed it and his dead mother for laying it on him. If he had been weak, like her, he could have died with Joran, or shortly after. But his accursed strength would not let him die, and so he continued, his heart dead inside him, but his body doggedly going onward.


End file.
